The impact of colour – how to harness its power

You’ve probably noticed that `impact colour’ has been cropping up a lot recently. It’s that super-wow shade – the one that makes an instant impression, especially when combined with a dark neutral.

We thought we’d share a couple of stories that demonstrate its, well… impact.

The first one involves one of our stylists, Margaret Harris (pictured left). At a family event, Margaret wore a charcoal grey dress with a red scarf. She looked fabulous, of course, and had lots of compliments the following day. But the thing is, everyone said how much they loved her red dress.

Hang on… wasn’t it charcoal grey?

Yep, charcoal grey. But they remembered her red dress. And here at House of Colour, we’re not immune to impact colour either. Take a quick look at the picture at the top:

What colour dress is our model wearing? Well, it’s black obviously. But here’s the weird thing… When we published that image, people in the HoC office mentioned the woman in the royal blue dress. (Have you just checked the picture again?)

In both these examples, the impact colour was so memorable that people applied it to the whole outfit. And with the royal blue handbag, that colour wasn’t even worn around the face.

Try it yourself

In the first weeks after your colour class, impact colour is a great way of testing the water on your new palette. It’s also very low-cost.

Try out some small new additions - a scarf, a piece of jewellery, a handbag or a lipstick in your best impact colour. Anything worn on the upper body will work brilliantly. People will walk away thinking you’ve got a whole new look – even if you haven’t yet discovered your true style personality.

After a couple of weeks of receiving compliments all over the place, come back and try out a style class. It gets even better after that.